The Ripest Fruit
by TB's LMC
Summary: A little bit of humor, a little bit of hurt/comfort and a whole lot of stinky, sweaty men. Just another Five-0 story in which one or the other of the Bromantically Challenged Duo may or may not be…a fruit. Bromance, no slash. Rated for language.
1. Chapter 1

_Summary: A little bit of humor, a little bit of hurt/comfort and a whole lot of stinky, sweaty men. Just another Five-0 story in which one or the other of the Bromantically Challenged Duo may or may not be…a fruit._

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><p><strong>THE RIPEST FRUIT<strong>

* * *

><p>"Shit," Danny swore, grabbing his towel from the nearby stationary bike's handlebar-like contraption and mopping at his sweat-covered face and neck. "Why is it <em>always<em> when I'm in the middle of a workout?"

There wasn't time for a shower if the urgency in Steve's tone was any indication. Which meant that once again, Danny was going into a situation where he could be on-the-job for twenty-four hours or more until this latest kidnap victim was found, all without a shower to start it off.

He sighed and raced to his locker, where he threw on a clean pair of dress pants, grimaced as he pulled off his sweaty white exercise socks and shoes and put on his work ones, peeled his white V-neck tee shirt away from his body and reluctantly slid his arms into one in a long line of long-sleeved work shirts that he always rolled the sleeves up on.

"Why don't you just get short-sleeved ones?" Chin had asked one day when they'd been in the locker room together.

"I'm not going out and buying a whole new wardrobe for the sake of a state that can't even realize it's supposed to have four distinct seasons," was Danny's very typical and acerbic reply.

Luckily, Chin didn't give him shit about things like that. Not like Steve did.

Steve. This was all his fault. Danny didn't know why or how, but he was blaming the fact that he was hot, sweaty and now griming his work clothes up within thirty seconds of having put them on, on Steven J. McGarrett.

Just because.

"Fuck," Danny swore, pocketing his wallet and phone and realizing he didn't have his keys.

Which meant Steve had the Camaro.

Which meant Steve would be swinging by the palace to pick him up.

Which meant Steve would give him hell for his appearance.

Danny ran a hand through his hair. It had curled up pretty well during his workout – or what part of it that he'd gotten through anyway. Wouldn't lay down nice and neat for nothing.

Which meant Steve would be giving his 'do come-hither looks all damn day and night.

Danny sighed. How was it his life, he wondered, that he got saddled with the likes of a partner who at times was the girl in their work marriage, and at times was such an Alpha Dog that Danny just wanted to pull out his gun and shoot him?

He raced out of the basement gym locker room, up the steps and through the halls 'til he reached the front door. He burst outside into the hot afternoon sun, blinked, heard a familiar horn honk, and got eyes on his car.

His car.

That Steve was driving.

Of course he was.

Growling, he ran to the vehicle, opened the passenger door and slid inside, with Steve pealing out of the lot before he'd even gotten the door closed properly.

"Whoa," Steve said, then deliberately sniffed the air.

"Not one word, McGarrett," Danny said, holding up his left hand as he tugged at the seatbelt with his right. "Not one _word_."

Steve smirked.

Danny scowled.

Ah, just another day for the two figureheads of Five-0.

Danny sulked all the way to the crime scene.

* * *

><p>Of course it turned out to be an extraordinarily hot day. Temps skyrocketing way too close to ninety when you had eighty percent humidity, in Danny's not-very-humble opinion. How the hell Steve managed to stay looking like he was encased in his own personal air-conditioned bubble was beyond him.<p>

Especially when, after interviewing the fourth witness-slash-suspect of the day, the sun began to set and Danny looked like something the tide washed in.

Oh, God, now he was even thinking in island-dweller metaphors. He facepalmed.

"Danny?"

"Yes, O Maddening Partner of Mine," Danny deadpanned, looking up at the beanpole standing in front of him.

"Anything wrong?"

That smirk. Danny would love to wipe that smirk off Steve's face. "Nothing at all if you don't count the fact that my clothes are probably ruined by my own good sweat, plastered as they are to my flesh."

"Well, I wasn't going to mention it, but you are pretty ripe."

That was the last straw.

When, five minutes later, Chin and Kono approached Steve asking why he was standing there looking a little flummoxed and a lot abandoned due to the absence of both his partner and his partner's Camaro, Steve's only response was, "He needed to go home for a shower."

He didn't bother telling them that Danny had executed a ninja move even _Steve_ was in awe of to remove the car keys from Steve's right thigh cargo pants pocket in less than five seconds flat.

* * *

><p>Danny looked nice and fresh.<p>

Well, as fresh as he could for six in the morning standing at the big touch-screen computer table with far-too-chipper teammates, that was.

He took a couple long pulls from his large cup of coffee courtesy the nearest Starbucks and Kono being sympathetic to people who weren't necessarily morning persons, gave her a grateful look and received a brilliant Kono Smile in return.

Okay, he liked Kono just fine. She was good people.

It was already eighty-five degrees outside. At six in the morning. So Danny, of course, felt the best course of action was for him to remain in the office chasing down leads and information by phone while the weirdoes who thought Hawaii was Paradise and called it Home chased people outside on foot in the heat and humidity.

This, he felt, was a brilliant plan.

Never mind the Kicked Puppy Look he got from Steve, as if to say, "But…but…you're my partner, you're supposed to…you know."

He had the ability to ignore Kicked Puppy Looks like nobody's business, did Danny Williams, and had largely become immune to his partner's various faces he liked to pull out and wear whenever he thought they might get him what he wanted.

Ha. Danny would not be swayed. _Someone_ needed to be making all the phone calls, and there was no reason it couldn't be Danny, was the logic he used. Chin tried to diffuse the situation by telling Steve he'd be happy to go with him for the day, but Steve set his jaw, folded his arms over his chest and stubbornly announced he'd go alone, and in his own truck.

"Well," Danny said smugly as Steve stalked out of the bullpen, "I think Hell just froze over."

"I think you hurt his feelings, _brah_," Kono said. Danny shot her a look and she held up her hands defensively. "I'm just sayin'."

"Pfft," was Danny's eloquent reply. "I am not going out there in that heat with a man who's as likely to make me run twelve miles after his stupid ass chasing a suspect as he is to get me shot or thrown off a cliff. I will stay here nice and cool, safe and sound, free of your disgusting Hawaiian weather."

"You just don't like it when your hair gets wavy," Chin said sagely. "Trust me, I know what that's like."

"Yeah, but on you it looks hot. On me, it looks Twink."

Kono burst out laughing as Chin tried desperately to keep the _Oh-No-He-Didn't_ look off his face. The cousins made their way to the double doors, Kono wiping tears of laughter from her face. "Good one," she threw back over her shoulder as they left.

Danny grinned. He had a whole backpack-full of one-liners like that. After all, he was from Jersey, Capital of Sark. He clapped his hands together and headed to his office, perfectly happy to be the guy doing paperwork today.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Author's Note_**

_Because I've had several people ask about it or comment on it: in Chapter 1 when Danny thought of New Jersey as the "Capital of Sark," he actually _did_ mean Sark – not Snark and not the bad guy from the movie "Tron." 'Sark' is the shortened slang term for 'sarcastic' that I use. Also (for the record), there is an entry in the Urban Dictionary which defines the word 'sark' as a person who complains about everything, so even using that definition rather than my own fits my intent._

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><p>Four hours later, not so much.<p>

He was…all right, okay, he was lonely. There. He said it. Er…thought it. His Monkey was at school, so he couldn't even put her on speakerphone and listen to her ramble on about the boy in class who kept pulling her braided pigtails (Danny was going to just up and arrest the little reprobate one of these days) or the latest _awesome_ book they were reading ("It's called _what_?") or the Math homework she needed help with (planars vs. solid figures and how many sides did a polygon have again?) or any of the plethora of other things that gets a little girl through her day.

The office was deathly quiet save for the electronic hum that always served as a backdrop, only normally you couldn't hear it for the sounds of life that emanated from the bullpen or various offices.

He could hear it today.

Danny sighed, locked his computer and decided it was time to grab some lunch. Hell, maybe he'd even be magnanimous and find out where Steve was, take him a plate of something. After all, if it wasn't for Danny, Steve would never eat properly at all. In spite of what the man claimed, a chicken breast the size of the palm of your hand, a cup of some weird Hawaiian vegetable concoction and a few spoonfuls of rice did not a meal make.

As he headed out to the parking lot, he pulled his car keys out of one pocket and his Smartphone out of the other and just hit the top number on his Recent Calls list. After all, other than Grace, _nobody_ called him more than Steve.

It rang and rang, then went to voice mail.

Oh, boy. Maybe Kono was right. Maybe Danny _had_ hurt Steve's feelings. The Neanderthal had them in spades, after all, and Danny, well, he was man enough to admit that sometimes he just talked without thinking. Oh, shut up, all right, _most_ of the time he talked without thinking about the repercussions of what he said but dammit, it was hotter than downtown Newark in the middle of July and the hot breeze did little to help and Danny just sort of did this stream of consciousness thing where everything he thought came right out of his mouth and it was how he worked things out and kept from exploding, all right, and...wait, where was he..?

Ah, right. Steve.

Danny sighed and redialed his partner's number. Once again, it just rang and rang and eventually went to voice mail. "I'm going to bring you a plate lunch," Danny said in his message. "Which will only work if you tell me where you are."

Just as he was ending the call, his phone rang. He saw Chin's name pop up and thumbed the line open. "Yeah, Chin, what've you got?" he said, stopping right next to the Camaro and wiping the beads of sweat from his brow that had already formed on the short walk from the from the palace doors.

"Have you heard from Steve?" Chin asked, voice tinged with concern.

"No, I just tried calling him. It went to voice mail."

"He called Kono a couple hours ago," Chin informed him. "Said he'd gotten something from one of the eyewitnesses, a lead on a house out in Heeia."

"And?"

"And he said he was going to swing by and pick you up first."

Danny froze with his fingers on the Camaro's door handle, then hissed and jerked his hand back when he realized it was burning hot. "Two _hours_ ago?" asked, shaking his hand in pain. "Where _was_ he?"

"Sitting in his truck at the parking lot of the Goodwill store on Kaumualii Street."

"I've never been to Heeia, is it far?"

"Probably thirty, forty minutes with traffic at this time of day."

"So if he'd gone out there on his own, if he was too mad at me to pick me up?"

"He would've been out there and back already. I was trying to get hold of him because Kono and I are going to get lunch and we wanted to know if you guys needed us on the lead he had or if we could head to Waialua to follow up on a couple of our own."

"And you can't get him."

"No."

"So him not answering the phone isn't just him being cheesed off at me."

"I don't think so, _brah_."

"Shit."

"My sentiments exactly."

Danny pivoted, pocketed his keys and headed straight back to the palace. "I've only tracked the GPS signals in our phones once and that was with you talking me through it when we were looking for Kono."

"I've got your back. Let me know when you're ready."

Danny grunted his response as he went up the steps and yanked open the front door. Something was wrong. Not answering when he saw it was Danny after their spat this morning was one thing. Not answering when Chin called several times in a row was altogether another.

Shit. _Shit shit shit shit_.

"What the hell have you gotten yourself into now, Steve?" he muttered, drawing interesting looks from a few people he walked past. "Dammit."

One minute after reaching the computer table and Danny had a location on McGarrett. Or at least, on his phone. "It's showing a dead hit for 46 Nahiku Street in Heeia," he told Chin, who'd been standing by on speakerphone.

Danny heard him give Kono the address. "We're on our way," Chin then said to him. "Meet us there?"

"I'm out the door," Danny said – and he was. Halfway to the Camaro already, in fact. "I'll keep trying his cell. I transferred the signal to your phone."

"Okay, I'll switch over to the feed now."

The call ended and Danny mounted his phone on the dashboard as he slid into the driver's seat, cursed a blue streak when his feet couldn't reach the pedals and slid the damn seat forward. "Elephantine blockhead."

Yet even as he left rubber on the pavement, fishtailing just a bit when he careened out of the parking lot, Danny couldn't help but be overwhelmed with concern.

And guilt.

What if the last time he'd ever see his partner alive had been him hurting Steve's feelings? He swallowed convulsively and gave himself a good, hard mental shake. He would _not_ think that way. Steve had at least a dozen horseshoes up his ass, ensuring he made it through the most ridiculous situations more or less intact on roughly a daily basis.

With Danny's luck, Steve had simply left his phone somewhere.

Except Steve always had his phone in one of those stupid cargo pants pockets. Even when he conveniently forgot his wallet, the phone was never more than an arm's length away.

Maybe Steve had just put the phone on vibrate so he could interrogate a suspect or a witness.

Except Steve would've felt it vibrating all those times Danny and Chin had tried to call, and he would've answered because he himself had bitched to high heaven about the one time Danny hadn't answered his phone due to being in the shower.

"I am not ruining a perfectly good cell phone by taking it to the shower with me on the off chance that some lunkhead will think I need to be called at eleven o'clock at night to come watch them Night Surf!"

Danny winced at the sound of his words running through his own head. He was kind of mean to Steve, wasn't he?

Well, the man _deserved_ it! He'd commandeered practically every aspect of Danny's life from Day One. Everything from determining where Danny would work to the contents of Danny's vehicle (both hidden and out in plain sight) to how they were going to work together as partners ("You get the dunce hat for the rest of your _life_ for not knowing basic police procedure by this point!") to who drove the Camaro on a daily basis (and took it home, for that matter) to what sights Danny should take Grace to when he had her.

You couldn't let a guy like Steve get away with that shit without _some_ sort of pushback because once you did, he'd take over completely. Danny could just imagine Steve going out and buying him a bunch of cargo pants and shorts, a few pairs of flip-flops ("Slippers are what you wear with your pajamas, Steven, these things are _flip-flops_!") and a bunch of tee shirts and polo shirts, then infiltrating Danny's living-space-of-the-week, tossing all his nice work clothes out the window (and probably even his favorite maroon cutoffs) and replacing them with his own personal brand of what constituted work attire.

Hell, he'd probably be forcing Danny to follow that crazy diet he was on, complete with celery-tomato protein shakes and _ew_. After a while, Danny was sure Steve would also insist on accompanying him and Grace on every single one of their outings, using his oh-so-infinite knowledge of the Hawaiian islands as an educational requirement for a young girl growing up here.

The thing that pissed him off more than the fact that Steve had probably gone and gotten himself shot, tied up or otherwise incapacitated was that Danny hadn't been there to keep it from happening. Or at least been there to help when it did.

But the thing that got under his skin even more than _that_, was the fact that right now at this very moment he'd give anything to have Steve commandeering every aspect of his life. Because even that was better than thinking Steve might never commandeer anything again.

Besides, who the hell else would put up with him the way Steve did, and keep coming back for more?

_God, we are so codependent._

Crap.

Danny set his jaw, lips tightly drawn in a thin, straight line.

Just…crap.


	3. Chapter 3

Danny met Kono's car on Pali Highway just before the large hairpin curve that took you out of your way east before getting you back on track - at least, as far as he could see on his Smartphone's map app. Kono rolled down her window and waved her hand out of it. Danny did the same to acknowledge, then dialed her cell phone.

"You're on speaker," she said by way of answering. "Have you been able to get in contact with him?"

"Nothing. Goes to voice mail every time."

"And I'll bet you left increasingly irate voice mails every time," Chin accused.

"Not _every_ time," Danny countered with a full-fledged pout in place.

But nobody laughed. Because each and every one of Steve's team members knew damn well this was _not_ their boss's M.O.

"I'm sure he's fine," Kono offered as they reached the hairpin part of the Pali's curve.

"If he is…" Danny growled, feeling equal parts of anger and downright freak-out fighting like warring factions in his chest.

"You'll kick his ass?" Chin asked.

"Damn straight."

"I called the Kaneohe City Police as soon as you got us that address," Chin said. "They're sending every available unit ahead of us. They should be on-scene…any time now."

As if on cue, Danny heard Chin's cell phone ring. He listened as Chin answered the phone. He heard the tone of Chin's voice change from hopeful to disappointed to something else he'd never actually heard in the man's voice before, not even when he'd been kneeling in a parking lot with a bomb strapped around his neck.

"All right, thank you. We just got on Kamehameha. We should be there in about ten minutes." He heard Chin sigh, could imagine the look he was exchanging with his cousin. "The house is cleaned out, Danny. Not so much as a stick of furniture or a speck of dirt to the naked eye."

"What about Steve's phone?"

"Nothing yet, but they only just got there and did a preliminary search. I told them on the initial call that they needed to be on the lookout for Steve's phone."

"Hang on for me a sec, guys," Danny said. He put the call to Kono's phone on hold, switched back to his contacts list and hit Steve's number.

The phone rang four times, and then was answered.

"Detective Williams, is that you?"

Danny's heart completely bottomed out. "Yes, who's this?"

"Officer Nathan Lane, sir, at the address your man Lieutenant Kelly sent us to."

"Nathan Lane?" Danny blinked. Because…_really_?

The officer sighed. "Yes, sir," he droned. Apparently he got a lot of guff about sharing a name with a famous actor.

"Where did you find McGarrett's phone?" Danny asked, mind back on the much more pressing matter.

"It was lying right next to the back door steps just under a bush of some sort. I took a photo of it before I saw it was you and answered it."

"Good man. Send the photo to me and do _not_ let that phone out of your sight. I'll be there in five."

"Yes, sir."

Danny heard his phone bing an incoming text. He looked at the photo and it was just as Lane had said – Steve's phone was lying in dirt just under the edge of a bush. Danny could see gray-painted cement steps not too far from it. He quickly flipped back to Kono's call.

"I called Steve's number. One of the officers at the scene found the phone under a bush out in back of the house and answered it. He's hanging onto it. He texted me a picture, I'll shoot it your way, Chin. See if Charlie can lift anything from it."

"You got it. So no sign of Steve, but his phone's there."

"He probably planted it," Danny said.

"If he did, then he might've left us a message somewhere on it," Kono chimed in.

"Most likely, if I know Steve," Chin agreed.

Danny didn't say a word. Steve was separated from his phone. And that meant that right now, there was no way of knowing where the hell he was.

* * *

><p>There was some kind of…goop…covering his eyes. Goop. He snorted quietly to himself. If only Danny could hear him use the word. The reaction would either be one of incredulousness complete with raised eyebrows and slightly open mouth, or a remark along the lines of, "Is that the Army term for it, Steven?"<p>

Come to think of it, where _was_ Danny, anyway?

Oh, yeah. They'd had a little disagreement this morning, so Steve was in Heeia. Right. He'd gone to talk to Romney Luka after Janalyn DeVoight had named the recently relocated mainlander as a potential witness to their most recent abduction.

Steve's mind followed the trail because right now he couldn't open his eyes and while he knew on some level that should bother him, the case and the missing man were front and center on his Worry List.

Over the past three weeks, eight men had gone missing from the various islands that constituted the State of Hawaii. Two from Maui, five from Oahu and one from the Big Island. All men were between six feet and six-foot-two, with dark hair – sometimes brown, sometimes black – and dark eyes. HPD had keyed in on the similarity and then Governor Denning's morning phone call had come advising McGarrett that a man had gone missing from Diamond Head.

Mike Laszlo had been set to meet two buddies of his for a hike to the top of the crater. After that they had a day at the beach planned. But while Laszlo's SUV was parked at the Crater's parking lot, there was no sign of him and calls to his cell phone went unanswered. The friends had made the hike on their own, thinking for some reason that Mike had gone on ahead without them, but there'd been no trace of him.

That's when they'd called 911.

And why did the governor care? Because Laszlo was a twenty-one year old intern with the governor's office, that was why.

And so Five-0 had gotten the case and they'd followed leads and Danny had smelled really, really bad and that had been yesterday.

Right. So what about today?

Today Danny _hadn't_ smelled really, really bad, but he'd been bitching about the heat already and insisted he wanted to stay in the office to do the boring side of police work himself rather than be with Steve.

And, you know, that had…it had hurt, okay? There, he said it. Er…thought it.

The biggest problem with Steve was that for the most part, the people in his life that he'd always cared about the most had sort of abandoned him or sent him away or he'd been in some other way parted from them on a long-term basis, whether through their deeds, his own actions or some external force.

He'd lost his mother.

Then he'd lost the entire rest of his family. His relationship with his father had been nearly nonexistent, then he'd been killed. Nothing from his sister until just last year. They kept in contact better now, but in the end he'd had to send her away again simply for her own safety. So once more, no family nearby.

He'd had the Navy – Naval Intelligence and the SEALs. But each mission was just that: a mission. At the end of it you went to wherever you were assigned next. Sometimes with the same personnel, sometimes not. You couldn't form too many attachments in that line of work.

And even when you did, it was difficult – just look at him and Catherine. As much as they loved each other, they were very often separated for the better part of any calendar year simply due to her still being on the move and deployed to wherever she was needed most in the world.

He had love, both from his sister and his woman, but long-distance love was just plain rough. He couldn't simply go find his sister to have a laugh or a beer with, or even get a hug from. He couldn't indulge himself in the mornings by rolling over and kissing his lover awake, making love to her at night when he needed to blow off steam after a shitty day and nothing less than her smile, her voice, her sharp mind and her body would do.

It was a little frustrating. All right, it was a _lot_ frustrating.

He thought he had Joe, but he couldn't be sure anymore.

He'd been betrayed by friends, by officials in high places.

Trust was something he didn't easily hand over to anyone. He trusted his team, his _ohana_. And while his trust in Danny had been a bit shaken when he'd come to learn Danny was intending to just up and leave Hawaii to return to New Jersey, his faith had been restored when Danny had left his pregnant ex-wife and his _daughter_ at the airport for the sake of Steve.

To the former SEAL, that kind of loyalty was…well…it meant everything. Everything.

Steve coughed, finally getting to the point where he was more awake than not, and then wondered why he was coughing.

He coughed again and felt a sharp stab of pain in his left side, just below the bottom of his rib cage. He tried opening his eyes.

Oh, right. Goop.

Goop and pain.

And a smell.

Steve realized very quickly that the smell was _him_ and gagged.

The thick iron scent of blood. Sticky and drying, plastering his shirt to his skin.

Urine. He'd evidently pissed himself. Great. What the hell would've made him do that?

The sharp jab of pain that hit him through his side again took his breath away this time.

_Focus, focus, focus_.

You're trained for this.

_Can't pass out._

What had he been thinking about?

_Focus._

Loyalty.

_Focal point._

Danny.

_Zero in._

Kidnapping case.

_Find the thought._

He'd been hit from behind.

_Hold onto it._

He had multiple injuries.

_Compartmentalize._

His team would know he was missing.

_Hang on tight._

They would come for him.

He gasped as the pain hit him harder than before and one thought stuck in his mind as consciousness faded to black.

_I smell worse than Danny did…_


	4. Chapter 4

There was nothing.

The CSIs were doing their jobs better than any Danny had ever seen, even back in Jersey. But other than Steve's phone, which was dusted for prints that the team suspected were probably only Steve's, there wasn't any indication as to who'd been here or what might've happened.

One of the HPD officers handed Danny the cell phone. Just as he was about to thumb it open to the desktop, his own phone rang. He looked at the display. "Hey, Max," he answered. "You have something?"

"I do indeed," the ME replied. "In examining the latest victim more closely after performing the standard autopsy, I noticed something very unusual encrusted around his eyes."

"Okay, and?" Danny asked, frustrated. He wanted to give his full attention to Steve's phone, but trying to decipher what Max was saying was something even _he_ couldn't multitask with anything else.

"Samples of the substance which I sent to the lab for analysis indicate its primary component is tree sap, more specifically, sap from the _Aleurites moluccana_, a tree with many varied uses throughout the world. In Hawaii, it is very often called the _Kukui_ nut tree."

Silence.

"Max!" Danny barked, drawing looks from three HPD officers and Kono as he stepped into the house's back yard and crouched down to inspect the dirt under the small bush where Steve's phone had been found. He traced the rectangular shape the phone had left in the dirt with his index finger, looked up the steps and realized there was only one way Steve could've left the phone where it'd been found without being noticed.

He had to have been dragged down the stairs, or maybe carried on a stretcher of some sort. He would've been able to drop or place the phone under the bush only in that way, because the branches were too thickly clustered and too close to the six concrete stairs for the phone to have simply fallen from Steve's hand and land where it had.

And if Steve was being dragged or carried low to the ground, that meant he was injured. Danny squeezed his eyelids close as he rose back up to his full height. "Max, please tell me what this sap being on the last victim's eyes has to do with anything." He took a deep breath. "Please," he said on the exhale.

"Yes, well, the sap from the tree had been made into a compound so that it sticks when applied, but can be peeled away without any of the sap getting into the subject's eyes. Whoever produced this particular poultice-like mixture used traces of alcohol, presumably to cut the properties of the sap slightly prior to adding, of all things, plain Crest toothpaste to render the sap into a thicker consistency, thus allowing the intended application."

Danny looked up as Kono came out the back door, examining the area around the door first, then slowly descending and looking to the right and left of the narrow steps as she moved. "What would be the point of this being on their eyes, why would someone do that?"

"It is only conjecture on my part, of course, but this effectively seals the victim's eyes shut. The mixture will harden, rendering the victim unable to open their eyelids, and to be removed the assailant simply needs to use water, perhaps a damp cloth or sponge, to wet the mixture until it becomes pliable enough to remove."

"Okay," Danny said, switching Max to speaker so Kono could hear, "did any of the other victims have this on their eyes?"

"No trace. I have gone back and checked each of them myself. It would appear that if this is the method your assailant has been utilizing rather than a more traditional manner such as tape or a cloth blindfold, that he carefully washed all traces of the mixture away on his previous victims."

"Meaning he was more rushed with this one," Danny concluded. "He didn't have time wash the goop off."

"Goop?" Kono repeated.

Danny flapped the hand holding Steve's phone at her dismissively.

"Ah, yes, that theory would fit, Detective Williams," Max replied and Danny could just imagine what he thought of his unscientific use of 'goop' to describe the concoction.

"All right, Max, thanks. Let me know if anything else rears its head." With that, Danny hung up with him and stuffed his phone into his own pocket. He quickly brought Kono up to speed on the 'goop' discovery even as he got into McGarrett's cell phone.

There didn't seem to be anything immediately evident in terms of a note or any kind of message at all from Steve on the phone and Danny's heart sank, his final sentence to Kono about the goop trailing off into the ether.

"Nothing?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I'll go through all the apps, check through his email. You didn't get anything from him, right? A text, an email?"

"No, Chin and I both kept checking our phones. You?"

"No."

Danny started opening every app on the phone that could possibly be written within. The Notes, Email both sent and drafts, the trash. The text app, the document editor Steve had recently downloaded to be able to view a file Charlie Fong had sent them a few cases back.

Nothing.

Danny's face fell as he handed the phone to Kono. "See if your boy can get anything," he said, then turned and walked back around the house toward the Camaro parked diagonally out on the street in front of it.

"Hey," Chin said as he exited the front door and came down the steps.

Danny stopped and looked at him expectantly.

"Nothing new," Chin reported quietly.

Danny told him about the tree sap mixture and that he hadn't found anything immediately apparent on Steve's phone that could be a message. His eyes wandered to the Camaro where he swore he could see the image of Steve sitting on the driver's side, lazily draping one arm over the wheel, slumped back into the bucket seat.

Where he wasn't.

Where he _should've_ been.

Danny's fault. All Danny's fault.

"You okay?" Chin asked.

Danny felt his face was puckered in something like a scowl and tried to relax it, but he simply couldn't. He sighed. "We need to find out what lead he was following. Do you know who he was talking to that led him here?"

"Janalyn Voight is what he said when he phoned to tell us he was on his way to pick you up," Chin replied.

Swallowing hard, Danny looked up at the house. "You call her, yeah?"

"Yeah, okay."

Kono rounded the corner of the house and headed along the driveway toward them. Danny's eyes darted down to her hand, in which she was holding an evidence bag containing Steve's phone. It swung a little to and fro with her fast gait. Danny frowned.

Steve had left the phone under the bush behind the steps. He was _convinced_ his partner had done so deliberately. But if he hadn't left any sort of message on it, _why_? Was the location of the phone significant? If Steve was incapacitated enough that he couldn't move under his own steam, why drop the phone at all? He had to have known the team would find out from Janalyn Voight at some point where he'd gone. So why leave the phone there to be found?

There _had_ to be a reason. Steve never did _anything_ without a reason.

The thought brought Danny up short. It was something he'd never really considered before, though on some level he'd always just sort of taken it for granted. His partner was a purposeful man, who'd been taught in the Navy that every single thing you did mattered. Every move you made, every look, every word you spoke had potential ramifications.

So all this time…the looks he'd give Danny. The fact that he'd insisted Danny be his partner to begin with, that he'd recruited him to Five-0 without so much as a by-your-leave. How he drove. How he went into potential danger zones after witnesses, suspects or victims.

The man did _nothing_ without a solid reason behind it, though Danny doubted he'd ever be able to fathom those reasons.

That meant he left that damn phone at the house rather than keep it on him so his team could find him for a very important reason. Something he considered more important than he himself being locatable.

Danny hurried to close the distance between himself and Kono, reaching his hand out. Without a word she gave him the evidence bag, which he opened and dumped the phone out of. "What is it?" Kono asked, exchanging a look with Chin when he loped up to them.

"One thing I didn't check," Danny said, thumbing the Smatrphone on to the desktop and getting into the actual phone app.

There was the outgoing call to Chin and Kono.

And one more outgoing call. But not to Danny's work or cell phone. Not to Chin or Kono's phones. Not to the governor's office. Not to any number Danny recognized. It wasn't even a Hawaiian area code. He quickly tapped the number and the phone made the outgoing call.

After two rings, it was answered. When Danny heard the voice on the other end, his eyes went wide.

It _couldn't_ be!


	5. Chapter 5

"What'd he do now?" were the first words out of her mouth.

"Mary _Ann_?"

"You're not my brother."

"No, it's…it's Detective Williams."

"Danny? Why are you calling me from my brother's phone?"

"He called you earlier today."

"Yeah, so? What's going on?"

Danny rubbed a hand over his forehead, walked a couple steps forward, then turned and looked at first Chin, then Kono. "Steve's missing," he said. "We're doing everything we can to find him, but so far all we've got is his phone. And from what I can tell, you're the last person who spoke to him."

There was dead silence on the line.

"Mary?"

"He called me about you," she said, voice shaky. "Danny this and Danny that. You know, the usual."

"The usual?" Danny's face went pale.

"He was upset, like he always gets when... told him he was still too pissed off to go pick you up…Danny…where's my brother?"

"You told him not to come _get_ me?" Danny bellowed into the phone. "_That's_ why he went to a suspect's house_ alone_?"

"I didn't know that's where he was going, he just said he had to go do a thing and, well, he always calls me when something's got him in its crosshairs, you know? I don't know. Where the hell is he?"

"That's what we're trying to find out. He didn't say _anything_ out of the ordinary to you? Mention anything about the place he was headed?"

"He said something about…I don't know, he was remembering the time we went to see _Phantom of the Opera_ with Mom and Dad in LA, on about the mask, if I remembered it or something. Then he was saying something about picking you up for this thing he was doing, going on about some shit that went down this morning, asking me what he should do, he just, dammit, I don't know! What the hell did you _do_ to him?"

"_Phantom of_-I didn't do _anything_!" Danny yelled, one hand going up in the air. Several HPD officers stared. His face pinked up and he dropped his volume to a near-whisper. "It's fucking hot as hell here, I just didn't want to traipse all over the island in this heat. I can't take it like he can, and he doesn't seem to understand that. It wasn't personal."

Mary was quiet for a moment. "When it's you, he takes everything personally."

Danny looked everywhere but at the cousins as Mary's words hit him.

Hit him _hard_.

"I'm sorry I told him not to go get you, I didn't know he would be putting himself in danger if he didn't! I didn't even know he was working! I never would've told him to simmer down for a while longer!"

"Simmer down," Danny repeated, wiping away the sweat that was cascading down his neck from his hairline. He felt his emotions getting the better of him and turned away from Chin and Kono to pull himself back together.

"Danny, please tell me he's going to be okay. Please tell me I didn't send him to his…Danny, _please_."

Danny couldn't keep the tremor from his voice when he replied. "If anyone caused whatever it is that's happened to him, Mary Ann, it wasn't you." He took a deep, shaky breath. "I'll keep you updated. Right now I've got to concentrate on finding him."

He could hear the tears in Mary's voice when she responded "Yeah, okay. I'm sorry, Danny. He just…he's afraid of losing you…_any_ of you…like he's lost almost everybody else, you know? He just tries too hard to keep you guys too close, is all."

"I'll tell you one thing," Danny vowed, and this time he turned and looked first Kono, then Chin, directly in the eyes, "when I find him this time, he won't ever have to try that hard again."

With that, he hung up.

Only thing was, he had no idea what to do next.

* * *

><p>Steve awoke with a gasp.<p>

Something wet was touching his face. His eyes. He could feel a pull, sense someone was there with him. He kept stock-still as a male native-sounding voice said, "Welcome back."

"Who are you?"

No answer.

Steve kept himself stock-still as whatever it was covering his right eye was pulled away. Then a damp cloth was applied and he felt the last bit of the substance scrubbed away until at last his right eyelid fluttered open.

The skin of the man's arms and legs definitely lent credence to the man being a native Hawaiian. But a good portion of his face was covered with a white mask. The same white mask that'd prompted the call to his sister. The call where, embarrassingly enough, the conversation had take a sharp turn from talk of Mary's boredom with the musical when they'd seen it as a family in LA, to Danny's refusal to come along with him that morning.

If Danny ever found out Steve talked to his sister about him, the man would _never_ let him live it down. Steve had to stifle a groan, and turned his attention back to the man in front of him. The mask he was wearing covered everything from his hairline to the top of his upper lip. His eyes seemed dark, but the room where Steve was wasn't really lit well, so it could've simply been shadows.

Steve's left eye was next freed from what covered it, and the warm and wet cloth was once again applied. "Much less nasty than tape, wouldn't you agree?" his captor asked gently.

"You're the one who's been kidnapping all these men and killing them," was Steve's reply.

"And you found me. I'm impressed by your police work." He ran his hand along Steve's arm. "Finally."

"What is it you want with me?"

"You couldn't tell from the trail I left? The trail of all those men who looked like you, you didn't realize it was you I was leading up to?" The man clucked his tongue. "I need to rethink my high estimation of your detecting skills. But first I'll give you a bath, I think."

"When hell freezes over," Steve spat, but the effort made the pain in his side that he'd forgotten rear up and bite him hard. He gasped, curling forward. The move stretched his shoulders and he immediately arched back to ease that second pain even as the stabbing in his side grew worse.

"It's such a shame you made me shoot you. I would have preferred you be intact, but you'll live long enough with the poultice I've applied. After that I'll kill you anyway, so your wound won't matter."

"Why are you doing this? Why kill all those other men if I was the one you wanted?"

The man hunkered down so he could focus both eyes on Steve's. "Is this the part where you get the bad guy to confess the reason behind his deeds so that your cavalry can show up immediately after to save you from the clutches of a madman?"

Steve huffed out a mirthless laugh. "Something like that," he replied, voice straining as he fought against the pain.

"Ever so sorry to disappoint you," the man said with a sardonic smile. "I never kiss and tell." He seemed to consider Steve for a moment as he forced his breaths to even out. "Such control. You will be amazing under the tools of my new trade." His smile came out more like a grimace. "As I turn you into what you turned _me_ into."

He leaned forward and brushed his thumb over Steve's lips. Steve recoiled, jerking his head back. The resulting jolt of pain from his shoulders nearly made him pass out.

"Now you just lie here and rest, and I'll return soon with a special drink for you."

"I won't drink it," Steve said, venom dripping from his voice as he glared at the madman.

"Oh, you will, trust me. And then you'll be bathed. You managed to relieve yourself in the back of my truck on the way here. Unfortunate, but not an insurmountable problem." He rose to his full height, maybe about five-eight or five-nine, Steve thought, and leered at him. "I will enjoy testing your limits, Lieutenant Commander." He turned on heel and crossed the two feet between Steve and the door. "I will enjoy making you as ugly as you made me."

He exited and closed it behind him. Steve heard three locks that sounded like slides and deadbolts, and then silence. Slowly he looked around the room and realized it was very small. There was a long metal table like the ones in the autopsy rooms near one wall. No windows in the room, only a bulb in the ceiling that cast an eerie yellowish light around.

The strange thing was that the walls were metal rather than any kind of wood or plaster. They seemed old but well-maintained. The floor he was on was the same cold, smooth metal, looking almost like pure iron or maybe well-aged and weathered steel. Once again moving as slowly as he could, Steve looked away from the side of the room his feet were pointing toward and craned his neck up to look at the other end of the room.

There was an adjustable-height table on wheels in the corner. From his vantage point he could tell there was something on top of it, but couldn't see what.

He steeled himself against the pain from his shoulders and side and tried to figure out the guy's motive. He obviously had a type that closely resembled Steve's height and appearance. And if his own words were to be believed, the whole point of kidnapping each victim was to lead up to Steve, but why didn't he just take Steve right away instead of all these other men first? And then there was the fact that they hadn't been tortured in any way that Max had found prior to being killed. In fact, their CODs had been gunshot wounds clean through their skulls right between the eyes.

The drink. The man had said he was going to be bringing him something to drink. "He's going to drug me," Steve whispered to himself and tried testing the rope binding his wrists. All he managed to do was feel it dig into his flesh, rough rope wrapped around his body, wrists and his legs, cutting into his flesh where there weren't any clothes to provide respite.

He had to get out of there.

But how? There was no way he was getting out of this rope, and with a gunshot wound and his shoulders pulled nearly from their sockets by how he was tied, Steve was seeing no way to free himself without help.

_Help._

His team.

They would find him.

He heard the slide and deadbolt locks being opened and swallowed the bile that threatened to rise into his throat.

_Hurry_, he prayed within his mind, picturing each of his teammates one by one. It wasn't like he believed in telepathy, but right now he was prepared to believe in anything that could get him out of this unscathed.

The Phantom truly looked like that now, complete with black suit and cape, a black hat on his head and still the mask covering the entire top half of his face.

Steve kept his eyes on him as he approached, a glass of dark liquid in his hand. "You may as well not fight it," he said, crouching down next to Steve's head. He pinched the straw that hung out the top of the glass in between his index and middle fingers and guided it to Steve's mouth. "Drink."

"Go to hell," Steve growled.

"My dear Commander," the Phantom purred. He reached up, grabbed the bottom of the mask and yanked it off in one smooth move. "I _am_ hell."


	6. Chapter 6

They'd come back to the office but hadn't really gotten any further than they had at the scene of Steve's abduction.

Danny hunched forward and leaned his elbows on his desk. He ran both hands through his hair over and over again until it was literally sticking out in nearly every direction on the compass and some that he was sure didn't even exist on that.

Finally he just stopped movement altogether and rested his head in his hands. "Think, Williams," he growled to himself. "Dammit, _think_!"

Steve had to have a reason for leaving the phone. _Had_ to know they'd find it. Why hadn't he just kept it on him? Why would Steve have ditched the one thing that could've led the team straight to wherever he was?

Danny froze. Of _course_! Steve knew the guy who had him would probably search his pockets. He'd certainly be looking for hidden weapons and knowing Steve he probably had about eight of them on his person at any given moment, so the perp would've checked all his pants pockets, and-

"Danny!" Kono yelled as she ran out of her office. "HPD got blood at the house in Heeia!"

"What?" Danny asked, jumping to his feet and meeting both her and Chin in the bullpen. "Luminol?"

"Yeah, they finally finished combing the living room for trace evidence, and cleared everyone out to do a Luminol test." Kono pulled up their cloud drive on the computer, fingers flying quickly to get to the folder she wanted. A few double-taps later and four photos opened on the screen. She swiped one of them up and away to the large screen at the end of the bullpen.

"Look at the pattern," Chin said.

"Oblong, concentrated," Danny noted as all three of them moved closer to the screen to get a better look.

"I don't see any spatter around, just that one spot," Kono observed.

"And it was well cleaned-up," Chin added.

"Or so fresh that it wasn't hard to get out."

"Right," Chin nodded. "It probably didn't have a chance to set, otherwise that beige Berber would've looked stained."

"Anything on the walls?" Danny asked as Kono headed back to the table.

"No, they found nothing but this one spot."

"So however he was wounded, it would have to have been something that wouldn't leave splatter on the walls or anywhere else on the floor," Chin said. "That rules out blunt force trauma."

"Gunshot," Danny said, glaring at the photo like it was the glowing blood stain's fault.

"But he put his Kevlar on," Kono countered. "It wasn't in his truck."

"Kevlar's good, but it doesn't cover everything," Chin told her. "He could've been hit in the leg, hell, depending on where the shooter was, the bullet could even have gotten up under the edge of the vest."

"Arm," Danny continued. "Head."

"Well, if it was a headshot, he was clearly still with it enough to leave us the phone."

"Yeah, about that," Kono said, then chewed on her lip. "Why did he leave it? I mean, what, he wanted us to know he'd called his sister instead of coming to pick you up?" she asked Danny.

Chin and Kono looked at him expectantly. "I don't know, I mean, she just…"

"What did she say they talked about?" Chin asked gently, placing his hand on Danny's shoulder.

Danny looked up at him, then rolled his eyes and looked away. "Me, all right? He was…you know," he finished with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Upset about what happened this morning?" Kono asked.

"Yeah," Danny nodded, then blew out a breath and tried to smooth his hair back down. "Yeah," he said again, anger and grief welling up within him, "because I can't hack this fucking _state_!" he yelled at everyone and no one. "Because I had to be a prick and force him to go out there alone. My own _partner_! I'm supposed to have his _back_!"

"Instead you acted like a spoiled brat?" Chin asked.

Coming from anyone else, that would've been the start of a nasty fight. Coming from Chin, Danny knew, it was simply a concerned statement of fact. Danny looked at his friend, willing himself to retain some modicum of control. His entire body shook with the effort. Because Steve could be _dead_ because of him and that…it was just…he couldn't…

"Hey," Kono said, voice quiet and soft as she approached Danny from the other side. "It's just how you guys are. We know you don't do it to be, you know, a jerk to him."

Chin rolled his eyes and shook his head. "And Steve knows it, too. He's just a little…sensitive about some stuff."

"Sensitive," Danny barked out with a laugh. "You know, he called _me_ the sensitive one, right after we met."

"Now look, this isn't helping us find Steve, okay?" Chin said. "Whatever Steve's reasons were for going out to that house alone are his. It was his decision."

"With some sisterly advice," Danny reminded them. His mind flashed back to the conversation he'd had with Mary.

_"That's what we're trying to find out. He didn't say anything out of the ordinary to you? Mention anything about the place he was headed or who he was going to see?"_

_"He said something about…I don't know, he was remembering the time we went to see _Phantom of the Opera_ with Mom and Dad in LA, on about the mask, if I remembered it or something. Then he was saying something about picking you up for this thing he was doing, going on about some shit that went down this morning, asking me what he should do, he just, dammit, I don't know! What the hell did you _do _to him?"_

_"_Phantom of_-I didn't do anything!"_

Danny's face drained of all color. "Phantom," he whispered.

Kono and Chin exchanged worried looks. "What?" she asked.

Danny's thoughts began to coalesce. He started pacing the length and breadth of the bullpen, down to one end of the table and back, skirting around the cousins past the large screen with the fluorescent blood stain illuminating the room. Kono and Chin just looked at each other again, wondering if their Other Boss had started losing what little marbles he had left.

"Okay, let's go back over this," Danny finally said, stopping and leaning against the far end of the computer table. "Janalyn Voight tells Steve something about this house in Heeia that makes him think it's a good next stop. So he calls you two," Danny continued, gesturing to the cousins who were standing at either of the longer two sides of the table, "and he tells you he thinks he should take me with him. Now that tells me whatever Voight told him concerned him enough to think he needed backup."

"Except he ended up going out there alone," Kono pointed out. "So he must not have been _that_ worried about what he'd find."

"Are you kidding? He thinks he can take the world on himself!" Danny exploded, then seemed to realize what he'd done and shook his head. "Sorry." He smiled a little when Kono indicated with a wave of her hand not to give it a second thought. "Okay, so did you get hold of Janalyn Voight?"

"Yes," Chin nodded. "She said she told him a guy she'd known since high school dropped off the face of the Earth about six or seven months ago. Said the last time she saw him was when she tried to visit him at that house in Heeia three months ago. He wouldn't answer the door, but she saw through the window that he was wearing a mask."

Danny's head whipped up to look at Chin. "_What_ did you say?"

Chin frowned. "I said…she told him she saw this man, Palo Richards, through the window."

"A mask," Danny said, mind and face clearing at the same time.

"Uh…she said it was white, that it covered half his face," Chin offered, more than just a little confused.

"Oh, my God, that's it," Danny breathed. "That's it."

The cousins shook their heads at him.

"When I talked to Mary Ann, she said Steve was remembering the time their whole family was in LA, when they went to see _Phantom of the Opera_."

"_Phantom of the Opera_?" Kono asked, wrinkling her nose. "Steve?"

"He was just a kid. My mom loved all that Broadway musical stuff. His probably did, too."

"I think I see where you're going," Chin said with a snap of his fingers. "When Voight told Steve about the mask, it must have made him think about seeing _Phantom of the Opera _with his family."

"Plus he was upset about this morning, and Mary Ann says he always calls her when something's got him in his crosshairs," Danny said with a nod. "So thinking about something they'd done together as a family plus the other thing made him call his sister."

Kono looked at her cousin. "Okay, wait. She tells him the guy was wearing a mask. Just hearing that makes him think about _Phantom of the Opera_?"

"You're right, it doesn't make sense," Danny admitted. "Then again, most of the time I can't figure out how his mind works," he added with a tinge of sadness.

"Well, if it wasn't just the mention of a mask that made him think about that musical," Chin said, "then he must've found out something on his own after he left Voight."

"How? He didn't make any other calls."

"Danny, wait, I'm getting a call from Fong," Kono said as her cell phone rang. She thumbed open the line. "Charlie, you're on speaker."

"I went through every application on Commander McGarrett's phone. The only place I found anything more than you did was his browsing history."

"Shit, I didn't even _think_ to check his browser!" Danny said, mentally kicking his own ass for the oversight.

"What'd you find?" Chin asked.

"Approximately four minutes after he got off the call to your number, Chin, he did a search for costume shops in Honolulu. From that, he clicked a link to The Costume Closet on Lincoln Avenue."

"And?" Danny prompted.

"And nothing. That's the last activity on the phone until Detective Williams called and Officer Lane heard the phone ringing under the bush at the house in Heeia."

"Dammit!" Danny slammed the meat of his hand down on the edge of the table.

"Thanks, Charlie," Kono said as Chin pulled out his own phone. She gestured to it with her head. "What're you doing?"

"Calling The Costume Closet," Chin said, fingers tapping madly away on his own browser until he had the place's phone number. He dialed it as the others waited expectantly. "Yes, this is Lieutenant Chin Ho Kelly of Five-0, I—wait, what?"

Danny and Kono exchanged a look of hope.

"He was? What time?" Chin paused, listening. "Uh-huh. I see. And what information did you give him?" Chin nodded for well over a minute as the person on the other end of the line talked, and then said, "All right, got it. Thank you."

"What'd he say?" Kono asked.

"He said," Chin told them as he ended the call, "that Steve was there in person twenty-five minutes after he talked to Kono and me."

"He stopped there before heading to Heeia?" Danny asked.

"Apparently," Chin nodded. "He asked about face masks that cover half the face from the hairline to down below the nose. He was very specific, said it was smooth." Chin shrugged. "Janalyn Voight didn't tell me she gave him _that_ many specifics about it."

"Obviously she did," Kono said with a frown.

"The owner of the store said the only kind of mask he has like that is the Phantom one, so he looked up the sales of _Phantom of the Opera_ costumes for Steve and found a full one, hat, cape and mask included, that was sold to one Palo Richard three-and-a-half months ago. It's the only Phantom mask he's sold in the last year."

"That was right before these kidnappings started," Kono said. "Holy shit."

"Exactly," Chin confirmed. "He said McGarrett sat in the parking lot for a while after that in a big pickup talking on the phone, was there maybe fifteen minutes, then the next time the owner looked up, Steve had left."

"But what does any of this _mean_?" Kono asked. "So what, he found out this guy Voight told him about purchased a _Phantom of the Opera_ costume, then he called his sister and mentioned that same musical and talked about you?" she asked, gesturing to Danny. "How does any of this help us find him?"

But nobody had an answer for her.


	7. Chapter 7

Steve's eyes widened. In all his years in combat zones, countries where atrocities were committed against people on a daily basis, seeing survivors of roadside bombs…never before had he witnessed a sight like the one before him.

The majority of the man's skin surrounding his eyes, on his forehead and on his cheekbones was just _gone_. Oozing, scabbed and open, Steve could see bits of skull, striations of muscle, and even delicate veins or arteries, he couldn't be sure which. The edges of the skin were jagged as though it had been ripped away, and it was obvious the man's left eye was completely sightless from the gray-white film covering it.

He clamped his mouth shut, sealing his lips as tightly together as he could as the Phantom drew the straw closer once again. But he couldn't tear his eyes from the horror of the face in front of him.

"What happened to you?" Steve hissed through his lips before sealing them up tight again, determined not to take the straw into his mouth.

The man cocked his head.

"Who _are_ you?"

He rose to his full height, moved around behind Steve's head and set the glass of dark liquid down on the small table Steve had noticed before. "You want to hear my story."

"Yes," Steve said, seeing his opening and grabbing hold of it with both hands. Figuratively speaking since his own were still tightly bound behind his back. "I can't imagine going through life with that. Tell me how it happened." He hoped his voice was coming out as soothing and compassionate as he was trying to make it sound.

The man moved back into Steve's line of sight again. "I had to practice first. Make certain I could kill you when the time came. I'm not a violent man, Mr. McGarrett. I never was. I acted in the theater. Did you know that? It was my greatest love, singing on stage, even if it was only for school kids." He smiled wistfully, making his caricature of a face look all the more garish. "I only had that Groundsman job so I could have the time I needed to attend rehearsals. And then when you did this to me, it changed me. So I started off with men who looked like you, to make sure I could do what I needed to do to pay you back for taking what I loved away." He frowned. "Besides, you're a hard man to get alone. Your home's security is quite tight. I had to take it out on someone."

Steve shot him a look. This man had been to his _home_? And he'd killed eight other men because of...what? What had Steve supposedly _done_ to this man?

"Besides, that partner of yours always seems to be hanging around, and if it's not him it's those other two. Tell me something, why did you come after me alone? Is it that you didn't think I was a threat to you, mm? Even after seeing all those victims who bore such a striking resemblance to you?"

Steve swallowed hard, thinking back to the moment that it had, indeed, occurred to him. That first night after Danny had eventually shown back up at headquarters showered, clean and much happier. And with an apology for his partner for leaving him to hitch a ride with Kono and Chin, which Steve happily accepted as the four of them gathered 'round the computer table to catch each other up on what they'd found.

_Kono and Chin had gone on a coffee run after a couple hours of running through the evidence, then they were going to swing by HPD to pick up some results of tests they'd asked Charlie Fong to do, leaving Steve and Danny to mull over how the perpetrator was choosing his victims._

"_Jesus," Danny said at one point, eyes boring holes straight through his partner's skull._

_Steve blinked at him. "What?"_

"_Don't you notice something about all these guys?" Danny asked, waving his arm in the air toward the large screens hanging at one end of the bullpen where photos of the deceased victims were displayed._

_Steve looked up at them, then his eyes flicked back to Danny. "They're all men, pretty good shape, dark-haired, Max says they all had dark eyes ranging from brown to hazel."_

_Danny ducked his head down as if to say, "And?"_

_Steve frowned. He looked at the photos again. "What?"_

_Danny shook his head, sighed, and disappeared into Kono's office. When he emerged, he was holding a small, round mirror in his hand. He marched up to his partner, stopped toe-to-toe with him, held the mirror up so Steve could see himself and asked, "And now?"_

"_Danny, why do I want to look at my reflection?" Steve asked, and then he actually did and his mouth went dry. He stared at himself for a moment. Just over six feet tall. Good shape. Dark hair. Hazel eyes. Those eyes widened. "Holy shit."_

"_Ah, now he sees the light. Yes, Steven, they all look like you. From head to toe practically. Well, maybe without the tattoos," he said, flicking at one of Steve's biceps with his fingers. "It's a pattern. They all look like you."_

"_That doesn't mean it has anything to do with me."_

"_No, of course not, because the world doesn't revolve around you, contrary to your usual way of thinking," Danny agreed. "However, if all the victims were blond, handsome guys with blue eyes, you can't tell me you wouldn't automatically say they, uh, you know, resemble me?"_

_Steve swiped a hand down over his mouth to try and hide the smirk that settled there. "Handsome."_

"_Extremely," Danny said, laying the mirror on the computer table and running a hand over his perfectly coiffed hair._

"_That depends, Danno. They a little vertically challenged, too?"_

_And that was why, twenty minutes later, Kono and Chin found Danny with a headlock on his partner in the doorway of Danny's office. The cousins hadn't wanted to know. Steve and Danny had shook hands at their request, and pecked at each other with one-liners until finally calling it a night at one a.m._

_Five hours later they'd all returned to HQ._

_Four hours after that, Steve had been kidnapped._

Now he kept the image of Danny smoothing his hair front and center in his mind, deciding that was going to be his grounding image to keep himself on-track for whatever was going to come next. He smiled, and whether his captor knew it wasn't for him or not was irrelevant.

"I'm a nice guy, you know, in spite of what you may have heard on the news," Steve said conversationally. "I do care. So tell me what happened."

"The news is how I found out who blew up the shed," the man said, crouching down again.

Steve swallowed. The man's face was like nothing he'd ever seen, not even in a horror movie. "Shed?"

"You didn't know I was in there, did you, Commander? Didn't know that when you and your _Five-0_ and your SWAT team shot the place full of holes."

"SWAT team? Shed? Wait a minute," Steve said, mind racing. "Are you talking about the hostage situation? The shed at the school that McPherson blew up?"

"You know _why_ he blew it up? _Do_ you?" the Phantom growled. "I tried to _stop_ him! I came up through the floor and tried to pull his feet out from under him. He shot up the entire inside of the shed trying to get away from me, hit a gas can, it sparked and _BOOM!_"

"We didn't know anyone was in there! And it's not our fault you tried to intervene."

"Oh, of course it's not," the man said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "But you certainly got your name in the paper, didn't you? The head of the Five-0 Task Force," he intoned, miming a headline with his hands in the air, "saves two hostages. There were even photos of you getting the women away from the shed before it exploded." He rose to full height again, glared at Steve for several long seconds, then hauled his right foot up and kicked Steve hard, square where his gunshot wound was just beneath his ribs.

Pain exploded in Steve's body, he couldn't help the cry that escaped his lips. The man just laughed as Steve tried to remember how to breathe, tried to hold on to Danny and his hair, to use the blond, the blue eyes, the hairdo, the shortness, the man…

"_Stay with me, Steve, huh?"_

The man who was like the brother he'd never had.

"_Come on, tough guy, you've been through worse than this."_

The crazy Mainlander who'd become his best friend.

"_Hey, Steve, you're a trained SEAL, for God's sake, you can't take this jerk with your hands tied behind your back? Didn't they make you do that underwater in the Army?"_

"It was the _Navy_, Danny," Steve ground out, tears of pain leaking out of his eyes, spit pooling at the corners of his mouth as he fought the urge to vomit.

"What did you say?" the Phantom asked. "Navy? What are you talking about?"

"_Ah, now you've got him confused, Steve, see? The same thing you do to me on an hourly basis because your brain, it's a land that makes no sense at all."_

He could hear Danny like he was right there with him. He forced his mind to conjure up another image, this one of Danny holding his daughter tight, eyes closed in a moment of pure bliss. Steve smiled. He could almost hear Grace's voice yelling, "Uncle Steve!" last weekend when the duo had showed up on McGarrett's beach in their bathing suits.

"Gracie," Steve choked out, spit dribbling from his mouth as the Phantom kicked him yet again.

"I've done plenty of research on you. You even managed to beat a murder rap after killing the _governor_!" The Phantom kicked him again.

This time he held his tongue even as his mind completely blanked on nothing but a white-hot burst of pain that shot from his side down to his toes, up to his shoulders, screaming down to his fingers and finally exploding in his head.

"_Act like you're out of it. He isn't finished with you yet, moron, you don't have to be a hero."_

Steve struggled to catch his breath.

"_You_ chased that idiot into the shed. _You_ threw in the tear gas. _You_ got all the accolades for saving the lives of those women when it was _my_ sudden appearance through the floor that did it."

He kicked again.

Steve could hear Danny sing-song to him in the Camaro that day, _"You don't have to save everybody."_

"Danny!" he gasped because it was the only thing he could get his mind to grab onto.

"Now I'm going to get _my _name in the paper for turning _your _perfect, beautiful face into _this_!" the man screamed, gesturing at his own disgusting visage.

Steve struggled to keep himself conscious even as his partner's voice seemed to bellow in his ear. "_Hang on! I'm almost there!"_

No, Steve didn't really believe Danny was speaking to him telepathically. But suddenly he found himself _wanting_ to believe. Because if that wasn't Danny somehow sending him a message…if Steve was really going to face what promised to be an excruciatingly painful disfigurement and death at the hands of a guy who dressed like a Broadway character and blamed Steve for his disfigured face…well, shit, just..shit.

He wished now that he'd called Danny first. That he'd swung by and picked Danny up from HQ before heading out to Heeia. But really, he figured this would be another dead end, or maybe just another guy who would tell him yet another name. So much of the work they did was driving from one end of Oahu to the other just asking questions. And most of the time it was short conversations, a few answers and then on to the next lead.

Most of the time.

_Most_ of the time Danny was with him.

This time, Steve had chosen to be stubborn instead of admit he might need his partner for a couple little questions. The house had looked harmless. It had looked empty, so he'd thought, G_reat, another wild goose chase. Figures. _and had been glad he hadn't harangued Danny into coming along for no reason.

Up the front walk he'd gone.

The door had been unlocked, so after knocking, he'd entered.

As soon as he'd stepped across the threshold, he'd been knocked on the back of the head hard enough that it still hurt. And then as he'd reached for his gun, he'd been shot. He'd fallen, seen the man in the white half-mask lying on the floor right behind the door. A gun was in his hand and a smirk was on his face. "Gotcha," he'd whispered gleefully.

The bullet had gone up and under the edge of Steve's vest. Then the man had scrambled to his feet and punched Steve in the face, knocking him unconscious.

"I'll tell you what kind of life I've had to lead since you destroyed it!" the Phantom yelled, startling Steve out of his memories. He stomped out of the room, and quickly returned holding a folding chair in one hand and a dagger in the other. He unfolded the chair and made to sit down.

Knife. Jesus Christ. Steve knew he had to do something. He _had_ to or he was in for a world of hurt.

"_Now!"_ Steve heard Danny yell in his mind. It galvanized Steve into action.

Before his captor could fully seat himself, Steve swung his legs back and then forward as hard and as fast as he could. He knew the moment he swept the man off his feet. Knew, because when the man fell, it was directly onto Steve's side.

This time, the pain was too much for even Danny the Focal Point to keep him conscious.


	8. Chapter 8

"Why didn't he call for backup?" Danny asked, throwing his pen across the room so hard Kono thought it was going to go through the pane glass window. "Why did he go into that goddamn house _alone_?"

"Well, why didn't he just come by here and pick you up like he told us he was going to?" Kono asked. "I don't care what his sister told him to do or not to do. Steve wouldn't go into a hot situation without at least calling to let someone know." She hesitated. "Usually, you."

Danny looked stricken. "You're right. He listens to Mary Ann, but he doesn't make his decisions based on what she says to him." Danny snapped his fingers. "The guy must have gotten the drop on him somehow. Steve's truck was parked on the street. HPD found nothing in there out of the ordinary, so...dammit..."

"Okay, look," Kono said, "we know Steve. What does he do if he sees something suspicious, thinks he's got eyes on his suspect?"

"Charges in with his gun drawn," Danny said. "With me in tow."

"And either you're the one calling for backup or _we_ are," Kono nodded. "So if he pulled up in front of the house, even if he did intend to call for backup, if he saw this guy through the window of the house?"

"He would've gone in," Danny concluded. "_Stu_pid!"

"I still don't get why he didn't swing by and pick you up first," Kono said thoughtfully. "Maybe he was just being stubborn."

Danny sighed and shook his head. "Probably."

"Nothing's coming up on Palo. The only address we've got for him is the one in Heeia," Chin said, then drew his mouth in a tight, straight line. "There's got to be something here."

Kono scanned the information on the screen. "No priors, not even a traffic ticket. Last known place of employment was…ohmagod."

"What?" Danny asked, inching closer so he could see the screen.

"He worked at Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary School."

"I don't get it."

"It's right across the street from EMD Trading," Chin explained.

"You're kidding. Isn't that where Lee McPherson took those women hostage last year?"

"Yeah, Danny, that's _exactly_ where it is," Chin confirmed with a nod. "It says here Richard held the position of Groundsman at the school, but his personnel file says he stopped coming to work the Monday after we stepped in with SWAT to handle the hostage situation."

"That's the one I had to sit out because Rachel and Stan were overseas and Grace was sick."

"That's right," Kono nodded. "I remember that. We all went in Chin's car, Steve took over the negotiations, and then it went sideways."

"It _always_ does when Steve's around," Danny said, then clamped his mouth shut. Christ, why couldn't he just _stop_? Especially _now_?

Kono gave him a small smile, like she somehow understood.

Danny only wished _he_ understood why he was so damn sarcastic when it came to Steve, _especially _when they didn't know whether his partner was alive or dead.

"McPherson took two of the hostages, came out the back door and across C Avenue," Chin explained, pointing at the route on the Google map he'd opened on the computer, "and got to this small outbuilding on East 2nd Street just as we arrived with SWAT. It's right between the street and the school's secondary parking lot."

Kono picked up the tale. "SWAT surrounded the shed, and in order to get McPherson to give himself up, Steve threw a tear gas grenade in through the window. It did the job and the women got out safely, but McPherson started firing."

"Yeah, problem was," Chin said, looking at Danny, "we hadn't had time to get a school official on the phone, so nobody knew that the building was where the school's lawn equipment and spare gas was stored. Steve got close enough to get the women away from the building, using himself as a shield. The next thing we knew the shed blew sky-high."

"So what's that got to do with Palo Richard?" Danny asked. "Was he in the shed, too?"

"There weren't any reports made to Five-0 that any civilians were injured other than what the tear gas did to the hostages," Chin said, scanning through the HPD file on the incident. "Hey, wait. Look here." He thumbed through some photos that had been taken of the shed after the fire department had doused the flames. "What's that?"

Kono peered at the photo. Chin enlarged it and they all looked closer. "Is that a basement under it?" Kono asked, pointing toward a hole in the floor that didn't appear to lead to dirt, grass or sand.

"Sure looks like it. I didn't know there was any sort of underground structure there," Chin said with a frown. He flipped through a few more photos.

"Wait," Danny said. "Wait, you're telling me McPherson blew that shed up and suddenly the Groundsman employed by the school that owns it stopped showing up to work?"

"Yeah," Kono nodded.

"The mask," Danny said.

Chin blinked at him. "Mask."

"The Phantom." Danny shook his head. "Have you Hawaiians no culture? Christ, I lived an hour's drive from Broadway, saw every damn show there and Off-Broadway growing up. _Phantom of the Opera_. The Phantom wears the mask because his face is disfigured."

"And Palo Richard purchased a Phantom costume," Kono said, eyes widening as she put two and two together. "You think he was in that basement when the shed blew."

Danny nodded. "And I think it messed his face up somehow."

Chin shook his head. "But if that's so, why are there no addendums to the case file about it? If he sought medical treatment, somehow or other HPD would've gotten wind of how and where he was injured."

"Unless Richard never _told_ them how he got hurt," Kono offered.

"Why keep it a secret, though?"

"Maybe he didn't go to a hospital? Or lied about what had happened to him?"

"All right," Danny said, finally feeling like they were starting to get somewhere. "Kono, canvass all the hospitals, find out if any ER has records for up to a month after that blast, of any man that looks like Palo Richard coming in with wounds to the head, neck or face."

Kono nodded, glad for something constructive to do, and made a beeline for her office.

"Chin, I want you to see if you can't find those two hostages."

"See if they remember anyone else being in that shed?"

"Yeah. I'm going to call Charlie Fong and find out if there's anything else he's been able to get from Steve's phone," Danny said, giving Chin's shoulder a squeeze before turning toward his office.

"Hey, Danny."

He stopped and turned around.

"We'll find him."

Danny just nodded, then headed into his office, closing the door behind him. He sat down, unlocked his computer screen and stared for a moment at the photo he'd put on the desktop not two weeks earlier.

It was from two weeks after Grace and Rachel had returned to Hawaii, the first time Grace had seen Steve, Kono and Chin since the whole pregnancy fiasco. They'd thrown the little girl a Welcome Home party at Steve's house, and she was sitting at Steve's kitchen table surrounded by all four of them while an old camera belonging to Steve's father took their picture after a ten-second countdown.

Grace's smile was wider than he'd seen it in a long time. He couldn't help but smile back at it, then his eyes traveled to Chin, whose own broad smile rivaled that of Danny's daughter. Kono's mouth was open wide in laughter, and Danny remembered he'd just said something sarky to Steve about his gift-wrapping ability, which was why he was ducking his head down and Steve looked like he was about to cuff him.

He _had_ wound up cuffing him right on the back of the head just after the camera had captured the moment.

Danny couldn't help the chuckle that escaped as the memory of that day returned. He squared his shoulders and picked up his phone. Now wasn't the time for trips down Memory Lane. Now was the time to find Steve in time to make sure he stuck around long enough for many more memories to be created.

* * *

><p>One hour later found the team gathered back around the computer table.<p>

"Charlie said there's nothing else to be found on Steve's phone," Danny told them. "Prints are all his, the whole nine."

"None of the hospitals reported anyone with head or facial wounds of any kind showing up in their ERs except one teenage girl who scraped half her face off going over the handlebars of her bike," Kono said as Danny made a sympathetic face. "I sent the photo of Richard over but none of the staff on-duty recognized him. The administrators promised they'd show the photo to every subsequent shift's employees and let me know if anyone remembered him."

"The two hostages saw nothing with their own eyes," Chin reported. "McPherson made them kneel in the front corner of the shed, told them to keep their eyes closed. Fen Jiu did tell me she thought she heard him say, "Who the hell are you?" right before the grenade came through the window. It was something she forgot to tell HPD at the time."

"It has to be the answer, though," Danny said. "He _had_ to have been in there, gotten injured, and maybe couldn't go for help."

"He probably fell back through the door in the floor, either on his own or maybe McPherson pushed him," Chin added. "With the shed ablaze like it was, he wouldn't have been able to climb out even if he _wasn't_ injured."

"But he could've come out after the fire department doused it," Kono said, then sighed and shook her head. "You know, we could run this around all day and never figure it out."

"All the victims resembled Steve," Danny said, face grim. "Every one of them was around his height and weight, same coloring, darkish eyes. Only difference was not one of them had tattoos. This guy was working his way up to Steve. I'd stake my _life_ on that."

Kono frowned. "But if he was inside when the shed went up, especially if he was in its basement, how could he even know Steve was involved?"

"It was all over the news, cuz," Chin told her. "Some of those news reports get pretty detailed. Steve's name shows up in the papers constantly and the governor's publicity staff doesn't always catch the details they want taken out before the stories hit the stands."

"So you think one of the stories actually said that Steve was the one who blew the shed?"

"It probably didn't say that, but if I remember right, the headlines were all about Steve saving the hostages. I gave him shit about it," Danny offered. Then he grimaced. He _always_ gave Steve shit. About _everything_.

"Yeah, they do seem to focus on him all the time, regardless of what actually happens," Chin nodded.

"Which means this guy turned into a serial killer because he's got a vendetta against Steve thinking it's his fault he was injured," Danny breathed. "Fuck, and now he's got him."

"But _where_?" Chin asked. "Richard had a house, but it was emptied out like he didn't even live there anymore."

"Wait," Kono said, holding her hands up in front of her. "Wait, wait."

"What is it?" Chin asked.

"If there's a structure under that shed, any kind of structure…a basement, a former bunker, anything…well, if that's where Richard stayed after he was injured, then…"

"Bingo," Danny said. "You are brilliant and I love you."

Kono rolled her eyes.

"Chin, what'd that elementary school do with that shed? Did they rebuild it?"

"From what I saw last time I drove down that way, when we went to do the HPD Day at the school about two months back, they leveled it. There's just a concrete slab where it used to stand with a-" Chin cut his own voice off, then whispered, "Oh, man."

"Chin?"

"Danny, there's a rectangular metal door in the top of that slab of concrete. It looks like old, weathered steel or something. I remember wondering why they'd installed a door."

"Maybe they didn't," Kono chimed in. "Maybe it was there all along, even before the shed burned down!"

Danny pulled his weapon out of its holster and checked that it was fully loaded. He tucked it back into place and pulled the Camaro's keys out of his pocket. "I say we go find out for ourselves."


	9. Chapter 9

Steve woke up in a world of hurt, _way_ worse than it'd been before.

Which, he thought, stood to reason considering this Phantom guy had been kicking the shit out of his gunshot wound. _Jesus_.

The Phantom guy…who was nowhere to be seen. _Oh, shit._

Steve stopped feeling general pain and started to specifically pinpoint where it was coming from. Shoulders, check. Wrists, check. Side just under the ribs, check. He frantically focused his attention on his face. It took a few seconds for him to get his panic under control.

_Please no_, he thought fervently as he purposely wrinkled up his nose, blinked his eyelids rapidly and scrunched up his forehead. _Oh, thank God_.

It didn't feel like the Phantom had done anything to his face.

Yet.

He was still on the floor. He was still tied up. He really, _really_ had to go to the bathroom. The thought made his own stench invade his nostrils and once again he gagged.

Which wrenched his side.

Which made him gasp.

Which wrenched it again.

His mind spun as the door to the small room opened. Through the blurry haze of tear-filled eyes and pain-filled mind he saw the familiar cape and his heart sank.

"Time to play," was what the Phantom said to him. "In spite of your best efforts, you're still mine."

Steve wouldn't have been able to think up a good retort to that if his life depended on it. He blinked, felt a tear spill out of his right eye and focused on the man who was pulling the wheeled table across the room to the metal exam table.

Then the Phantom turned toward him and that's when Steve saw it: a neat slice right through the front of the suit jacket the man was wearing. When he pulled the dagger out from behind his back and made his way toward him, Steve knew immediately it was the dagger that had made the cut in the Phantom's jacket.

_He fell on the knife_, Steve said to himself. _When I knocked his feet out from under him._

"I'll be cleaning you up first," the Phantom said.

_Yes, his voice…he's in pain!_

Steve forced his mind around the pain he himself was feeling and focused on what he might be able to do. If the Phantom was injured, if that dagger had gone all six inches into the man's gut, he'd be bleeding pretty bad under that costume. He was obviously hurting.

The worst thing Steve could do to him was be uncooperative in terms of movement. Nobody with a knife wound in their abdominal cavity could do a whole lot of lifting, twisting, stretching or pulling. Steve could attest to _that_ one firsthand.

Before he could even put another thought forth, he felt a tug at his waistband and then the metal of a knife. He froze as the blade sliced right through the back of his cargoes.

Then a slice through his underwear.

His ass was laid bare. Reflexively, he clenched.

The Phantom snorted. "Don't worry, I don't swing that way." He was quiet for a moment, then, "Although I have to admit it would be the ultimate humiliation for a military man. Don't Ask, Don't Tell got repealed, though, didn't it?"

Steve ground his teeth together, knowing full well he was being baited and unwilling to give the bastard a damn thing in return.

There was a lot of jostling as the Phantom kept slicing at bits of fabric here and there through, around and in between the rough rope that had Steve's legs bound so tightly together he was beginning to wonder if he'd ever be able to feel them again thanks to his circulation being cut off.

Finally Steve felt pieces of his pants being pulled away, and then his boots and socks were removed one by one. But Steve wasn't paying any attention to the fact that as every second passed his lower half became more and more bare. He was paying attention instead to the telltale grunts, exhalations, pants and sighs coming from his captor's lips.

Because the Phantom really _was_ hurting. And if Steve played his cards right, he'd stay alive long enough for the man to bleed out just enough that he'd pass out before he could take that dagger to something other than fabric.

He just had to hope the psycho didn't suddenly think disfiguring some _other_ part of his anatomy was the better way to go…

* * *

><p>It was a Thursday afternoon. School was due to let out in an hour. Danny had made the call to the principal to advise him that Five-0 was operating at what used to be their lawn equipment shed, and to keep the kids inside until they'd deemed the area safe. Five minutes after Danny, Chin and Kono arrived on-scene, eight black-and-whites and HPD's primary SWAT team – the very same team who'd helped them with McPherson – rolled up with lights flashing but sirens off.<p>

"All right," Danny said as the team donned their bulletproof vests and rechecked their weapons, "Fong just sent through the only thing he could find about the underground structure here." He pulled his iPad from the backseat of the Camaro, shut the passenger door and went back to the trunk, where he set the iPad down and opened it to the desktop.

He maneuvered his way to their secure cloud, typed in the password and opened a folder with Charlie Fong's code embedded in its name. There was a PDF file sitting there, which Danny opened and used his fingers to zoom in to the center portion of.

"This was drawn up by the initial construction crew who built the school," Danny informed them. "It seems that what's beneath where the shed was erected is a former shelter built to secure the highest government authorities during World War II."

"Another bunker?" Kono asked. "God, they're _every_where."

"More of a bomb shelter from what Fong's email said," Danny replied. "This is the part with the trapdoor which is the only portion visible above-ground. There's a tunnel that stretches east all the way along 2nd Street, there," Danny pointed behind them and the cousins turned from the trunk to look.

"How far does it go?" Chin asked as Duke from HPD and the SWAT leader joined them in the parking lot.

"According to this," Danny said, studying the PDF as he used his fingers to swipe from right to left, "it stops under the first lane of Kamehameha Highway, but there's a branch that veers off about sixty feet northwest. It looks like Main Street is perpendicular to that branch."

"Right where 2nd turns into Main?" Kono asked, peering across the open field where trees prevented her from getting a clear line of sight.

"From what I can tell from this, yes," Danny confirmed. He looked at the cousins, who watched him expectantly. Then he looked at Duke and the SWAT leader. For a moment he froze, realizing he had by default taken the same position Steve always occupied.

They were looking at him – _all_ of them were – for a plan of attack. The only difference between now and the majority of the time was that this was one of their own they were going in after.

Danny took a deep breath and exhaled as his mind turned the problem over and over. "There's only one way in, one way out if this map is to be believed," he said, gesturing to the iPad. "But for all we know some other exit was made well after this was drawn." He looked at Duke. "I want four of yours where the main tunnel of the bunker ends here," he said, pointing at the juncture on the map. "And another four at the tail end of the northwest branch here."

Duke nodded. "You got it, Detective."

"Spread your guys out along the entire route. I don't care if it doesn't look like the ground's been disturbed. We don't know that Palo Richard doesn't have some secret escape hatch he's built and concealed."

Duke nodded and was soon with his men and women in blue.

Danny held out his hand to the SWAT leader. "Williams."

The man returned the gesture and shook hands firmly. "Reeves."

Nodding once, Danny looked at the map again. "You need to get us access to underground, whatever it takes. Then I want four of your men leading us into the bunker through that door," he said, pointing ten feet away where the metal trapdoor with a large metal ring handle sat looking far too innocent. "If we don't find McGarrett or Palo Richard along this main tunnel, I want those four with my team in the branch, with the rest of your men fanning out and providing cover to CSI who—" Danny looked up as a large van pulled up. "—just arrived."

Reeves nodded curtly, then went to brief his team.

"You think Steve's being held down that northwest branch, don't you," Chin said as he and Kono studied the map. "There are five rooms off the main branch according to this."

"Right, and two off that smaller northwest one," Danny said. "And yeah, I think he's being held in one of those two."

"What makes you say that?" Kono asked as Reeves sent two of his men to get the bunker door open.

Danny shrugged. "I don't know. Gut instinct, I guess."

Chin backed away from the Camaro and cocked his shotgun as Danny put the iPad back into the Camaro through its open passenger window. "Ready?"

"You bet your ass. Let's get Steve back," Kono said, weapon at the ready.

They turned as a small explosion blew the metal rectangular door off the five-by-five concrete slab. Reeves headed in, headlamps turned on. Danny, Chin and Kono palmed their flashlights and jogged over to the now-gaping hole.

They watched as the four SWAT members descended a metal-rung ladder embedded into the concrete wall. Danny went down after the fourth man, followed by Kono and then Chin. The remainder of Reeves' team brought up the rear one by one.

The first thing they heard was loud music. Then an operatic-sounding voice. Even in the darkness of the tunnel with only flashlights and headlamps to illuminate them, Chin and Kono saw Danny turn white as a sheet.

"What is that?" Kono whispered.

Danny swallowed hard. "_Phantom of the Opera_," he whispered back. "It's been a long time since I last took Rachel to see it, but if I'm not mistaken, that's a song from near the end. 'The Point of No Return.'"

Chin and a couple of the SWAT guys looked at him. "Does that mean what I think it means?" the normally calm Hawaiian asked.

Danny nodded without another word and they continued, with two members of the team that was behind them peeling off for each room that they encountered. Eventually, three-quarters of the way to the end of it, there were only seven of them walking in pairs, with Chin as lone caboose, constantly turning to check their flank.

The further they went along the tunnel, the more everyone was starting to believe Danny's gut instinct was right. And the louder the music became.

"Shit," Danny swore quietly as the stuffiness and ungodly heat combined to make his shirt soaking wet within minutes. He swiped an arm across his forehead and thought about how upset he'd been – ir_rati_onally upset – at Steve for calling him out on a case yesterday – Jesus Christ, had it only been _yesterday_? – and cussed himself out for the umpteenth time in the past twenty-four hours.

"You okay, Boss?" Kono asked from Danny's right as they crept along the dark metal passage.

"Yeah," Danny said as rivulets of sweat flowed down from his hairline, sliding along his neck, wetting his shirt collar.

One thing was for certain. If they got Steve out of this in one piece, Danny would never complain about the heat again. Because unlike his teammates, he knew that as stifling as it was down here, that wasn't the only thing making him sweat.

He'd welcome an unbearably hot Hawaiian day over the fear gripping his heart right now. And he'd welcome the self-air-conditioned beanpole of a partner he had making fun of him for it, too.

"_Danny…"_

Danny stopped short, wide-eyed. He held up a hand. The cousins listened while Reeves and his men continued forward. "What?" Kono asked.

"Did you hear that?" Danny asked. "I thought I heard Steve."

They listened and listened _hard_, but there was nothing more than the music continuing to blare at them from up ahead.

Danny waved them on and the three of them kept going. _Steve?_ Danny thought, feeling like a lunatic.

"_Navy, Danny…"_

Danny swallowed hard. Great. He was hearing Steve's voice in his head now. He really _was_ going 'round the bend.

"_Help."_

Danny felt an icy hand squeeze something inside his chest so hard it hurt. _Stay with me, Steve, huh?_

"_Hurts!"_

Danny fell further behind the cousins, who kept one eye on him and one ahead of them as the wall that was the end of the main tunnel came into view.

_Come on, tough guy, you've been through worse than this,_ Danny thought, praying to any deity who would listen for his partner's safety, having _no_ idea what Steve might or might not be going through right now.

But Steve's voice didn't come into his mind again. All he heard was the voice of Michael Crawford's Phantom singing to Christine Daee that if she chose him, her lover Raoul would live. And if she didn't, Raoul would die.

Danny's fingers moved slightly where he held the butt of his gun with both hands, readjusting themselves and readying his index finger on the trigger. There was a room to their right. Reeves and his three SWAT team members opened the door and entered.

Danny led the final three of the group – Steve's team – toward the end of the northwest branch.

_Hang on,_ Danny thought as he swiped beads of sweat from his brow before they dripped into his eyes. _I'm almost there._

Their blood froze in their veins when a man's agonizing scream ripped through the darkness before them, slicing right through the music.

"No!" Danny bellowed, taking off and sprinting the last thirty feet to the end of the tunnel. "_Steve!_"


	10. Chapter 10 & Epilogue

_Track down this murderer, he must be found!_

Danny got to the door first, tried the knob and it gave under his hand. He kicked it the rest of the way open, gun drawn, only to find…

_Hounded out by everyone!_

The cousins rushed into the room and flanked him.

_Met with hatred everywhere!_

Their jaws dropped.

_No kind words from anyone!_

"Steve?" Chin said tentatively as he stared down at the floor.

_No compassion anywhere!_

All they saw was a person covered completely by a long, black cape, a black hat off to the side about two feet from bodies one atop the other, and two bare feet poking out from beneath the cape. But the thing that made them take pause was the combination of the handle of a dagger sticking out of the black cape, and the most grotesquely disfigured face turned toward them, eyelids closed, they had ever seen in their lives.

_Christine, Christine…_

Danny and Kono lunged forward, grabbed the caped body and hauled it off what turned out to be their task force leader.

_Take her, forget me, forget all of this…_

A man who, at this very moment, was quite naked from the waist on down. Save for the ropes that were cutting into his flesh, the dried blood and the—

Kono gagged and grabbed her shirt to cover up her mouth and nose.

Chin stepped up to catch the left side of the drooping, panting Phantom when Danny unceremoniously let him go and fell to his knees at his partner's side, gun clattering to the floor. "Steve?" he breathed.

_Leave me alone, forget all you've seen…_

Steve was facing away from them, ass bared for all the world to see. His arms and legs were unnaturally white. He was completely bound by a very rough rope from neck to ankles, and he wasn't moving.

SWAT burst into the room as the Phantom sagged and finally fell completely between the cousins. "Get him outside," Chin ordered. Reeves nodded, gesturing to the three of his men who'd followed him in to pick up the seemingly dead man and haul him away.

_Go now! Don't let them find you!_

"We got this," Danny said when he turned and looked up to find Reeves was still there.

_Take the boat, leave me here, go now, don't wait…_

"Yes, sir," Reeves said with a small salute, and then he disappeared out the door.

_Just take her and go, before it's too late…_

"Is he-?" Kono asked hesitantly.

_Go!_

Danny's fingers were already searching for Steve's pulse on his neck. The sudden slump of his shoulders and exhalation of a held breath told the cousins all they needed to know.

_GO NOW!_

"Thank God," Kono breathed.

_GO NOW AND LEAVE ME!_

"Somebody shut that goddamn thing off!" Danny hollered as he turned and curled over his partner's prone form. "Steve? Hey, Steve, you with me?"

He got a groan in response.

He'd take it.

Kono turned off the CD player.

"Guys, can one of you get the duffel out of my trunk?" Danny asked, hands resting on Steve's arm. "And anyone got a knife?"

"I've got one," Chin said, pulling a small Swiss Army Knife out of his pocket and pulling out the largest blade. "Here," he said, handing it over. "Come on, Kono," he continued. "Let's go get that bag and see how our real-life Phantom's doing."

"We'll send the medics," Kono said as they exited the room.

Steve swallowed hard and managed to open his eyes. He looked askance to his right, saw Danny leaning over him from behind and managed a small smile. "You said…" he panted. "You said you were coming."

Danny huffed out a half-sob, half-laugh. "Only you could become the heroine in a Hawaiian _Phantom_ remake," he managed to get out without it sounding too choked.

His shirt sopping wet by now, Danny felt sweat trickling down his face but couldn't bring himself to let go of his partner long enough wipe it away. "I'm going to cut you out of this, buddy, but it's going to hurt."

Steve coughed once. "Can't be…worse than…" His voice trailed off.

Danny laid his hand on Steve's bicep. "Stay with me, huh?"

"Said that already," Steve mumbled.

Danny took a deep breath, knife poised to begin cutting through the rope. He very nearly threw up from the stench in the room. It took a moment for him to get his flipping stomach under control. "Talk about ripe," he growled, suppressing his gag reflex as he got another good whiff of his partner while he began to cut.

"What-exactly-is-your point?" Steve panted, obviously in a good deal of pain from whatever it was on his side that had bled through his bright blue tee shirt. Danny's fingertips touched the spot gently, then he returned to cutting the ropes. "He shot me," Steve whispered.

"I can see that," Danny replied as he continued sawing on the rope that was currently slicing into the skin just beneath the sleeve of Steve's shirt. "I _never_ smell this bad." Danny grunted as he made it through that first rope and reached around Steve, holding his breath of course, to pull the rough-feeling rope out from under his back. "You are the ripest fruit by far."

Steve seemed to wake up a little more. "Are you…calling me…a fruit, Danny?"

Danny snorted, then coughed when the stench assaulted his nose and throat. "Hardly." He reconsidered that as he reached over his shoulders, right by Steve's face, to pull at the rope again. "Well, maybe a pineapple."

"I ssssstill say _you're_ the ripessssst fruit," Steve slurred into his partner's armpit. "You ssst—st—stink!" Then Steve gasped and arched backward, tears trickling out of his eyes.

Danny reared back and laid his hand on Steve's cheek. "Hey, stay with me. I've almost got you free, okay?"

Steve's eyelids drooped. He blinked but manage a half-hearted ghost of a smile, so Danny went back to work on the rope, using the knife to continue sawing through the second knot holding his partner's wrists far too tightly at the small of his back.

"How'd the knife get in his back with you all tied up like this?" Danny asked, genuinely curious.

"Grabbed it and got him…" Steve coughed and pain flashed across his features as he ground out, "With my teeth."

"Your…_teeth_?" Danny asked. "How can you…I don't even…of course with your teeth." Danny continued working on the ropes. "Only you, Steven. Jesus Christ."

"By the way," Steve said, voice nearly gone by this point, "meant to tell you…"

"Yeah?"

"You're too old to be a Twink."

Danny's eyes widened. He glared down at Steve, who was smiling as his eyelids fluttered closed. "Damn Kono and her big mouth. You know, for that I should just leave you here to stew in your own...well...juices."

Danny stopped, his earlier self-flagellations coming back to haunt him. But then he just grinned. Because this? This was what they were all about, this…what was it, bantering? Bullshitting? Whatever it was, it felt right. Normal.

And because Steve was alive to banter back, it felt goddamn _good_.

Steve let out a couple of slow breaths, smile fading a bit as he replied, "C-Can't leave me here, D." His breath came a little faster. "Need a shower."

"No kidding," Danny agreed, returning to saw on the rope. "And one that lasts more than three minutes."

"Gonn—gonna help me?"

The knife finally made it through the rope and Steve couldn't keep from crying out as his arms and shoulders protested their sudden movement. Danny heard cartilage pop and winced sympathetically.

"You wish," Danny whispered, slowly helping Steve sit upright, _so_ careful not to touch his limbs. He looked Steve in the eye and his own eyes crinkled at the corners just to be seeing him alive and in one piece. "And you wonder why people think we're married."

"If thassa proposallll," Steve said, listing forward until Danny's hands landed palm-flat on his chest to keep him upright, "I coulda d-done better."

With that, Steve lost consciousness. Danny barely managed to catch him one-armed to keep him from falling sideways. He shook his head and sighed as Chin came pounding through the door with the duffel bag. "God, you stink," he groused to the unconscious man leaning fully against him. "_So_ the ripest fruit in the room."

Chin rolled his eyes as he handed Danny the bag, then turned and left the room, a broad grin on his face.

The thing of it was, Danny had never smelled something so putrid and yet so wonderful in all his life, and yes, he realized how sick, twisted and wrong that sounded. He pulled a spare pair of Steve's pants out of the bag and finished unwinding the rope from Steve's legs. Then he grunted, sweat just soaking him through and through, as he slid Steve's pants up first one "stupidly long, Jesus Christ" leg and then the other. Yes, Steve needed medical attention. But Steve also needed his dignity, something Danny knew _he_ would be desperate for if their positions were reversed.

As he got the pants pulled up over Steve's hips and all the buttoning and zipping done, Danny made a promise to both of them silently within his mind: he was never letting his partner go anywhere alone ever again.

Except maybe to the bathroom. Because there was only so much a guy could be expected to help even his best friend with, after all.

* * *

><p><strong>EPILOGUE<strong>

* * *

><p>"Why in the world are you taking me and Grace to Kaneohe?" Steve asked for about the tenth time since Danny, his Camaro and his daughter had picked Steve up from the McGarrett residence.<p>

"Uncle Steve, you're worse than I am!" came a giggling voice from the backseat.

Steve twisted around in the seat, grimacing only a little – a fact which did not go unobserved by his partner, of course – and grinned at the little girl.

"She's right," Danny groused, unable to quite keep the smile from his face. "You are, you overgrown child, now turn back around before you tear those stitches _again_."

Steve managed a very good pout but dutifully followed orders as they slowed on Kahekili Highway. Danny turned his left blinker on.

"Oh, my God," Steve breathed as they looped around Ala Koolau. "Are you taking me where I _think_ you're taking me?"

Danny glanced sidelong at him. "No, Steven, I'm sorry, I couldn't get tickets to _Rambo, The Musical_."

Grace laughed out loud from the back while Steve threw Danny the stink-eye.

Cars were lined up, slowly moving forward as one by one a valet helped each vehicle's occupants out, took the wheel and pulled away.

"It's the Paliku Theatre," Steve said, wide-eyed. "I haven't been here since I was a kid."

"I know," Danny said, and Steve's head whipped around to stare at him. "All right, we're up. Come on, Monkey, get out on Uncle Steve's side."

"Okay, Daddy," Grace said, her deep purple velvet dress swishing around her as Steve slowly got his tuxedo-clad self out of the passenger seat, then scooted the seat forward and offered Grace his hand.

Danny watched from the sidewalk as his daughter's small hand disappeared in Steve's. Gracefully she stepped out of the car, her white lace-trimmed socks and black patent leather shoes completing an ensemble which saw her hair long, straight and flowing down past her shoulders and the velvet dress's chest trimmed also with white lace.

"You look beautiful tonight, Miss Grace," Steve said, bowing only just a little and kissing the back of her hand.

Grace giggled, turned very pink indeed and glanced up to find her Danno rolling his eyes. "Come on, you're making more of a spectacle of yourself than usual," he groused, waving his hand toward Steve as he fully righted himself.

"Hey, guys, wait up!" a familiar voice called from down the sidewalk a ways.

Steve turned in surprise. "Mary? What are you doing here?"

"Came in last night," she said, wrapping an arm around Danny's shoulders and giving him a swift kiss on the cheek, "thanks to this guy."

Danny grinned. Steve looked perplexed as Mary very carefully hugged him and gave _him_ a kiss, too.

"Look at you two in your tuxes, aren't you cute?" she commented and Grace nodded her agreement.

"Cute, she says, swear to _God_," Danny muttered as Steve fell into step beside him.

"I like your dress, Aunt Mary. I almost wore pink, too, but Mom liked this purple one better."

"Thanks! You look like a princess," Mary replied.

"That she does," Danny nodded.

It was only when they got to the front entry that Steve finally realized what was going on and why they – and a couple hundred other people – were there to begin with.

Danny swallowed hard as Steve took in the black sign with white letters, a single red rose…and a white half-mask that was hung over the theatre's doorway. "Yeah?" Danny finally asked when Steve turned to look at him. He was feeling the fight-or-flight response, _so_ unsure of himself in this handful of seconds.

But words wouldn't come to the man who was only three weeks out of the hospital and still not yet cleared for active duty by his doctors. Mary came up on Steve's left side and grabbed his hand. Grace came up on his right side and did the same, clasping her father's hand on the other side as well. Steve looked at each of ladies, then back at Danny. At last, he nodded.

Danny huffed out a breath he hadn't been aware of holding. "Well, come on, or you'll make us late," he said gruffly, leading the way into the theatre.

"I haven't seen _Phantom of the Opera_ since LA," Steve whispered as Mary and Grace flanked him into the building.

"I know," Mary said softly. "Me too. That's why when Danny called and asked, I said yeah." She stopped as they waited for Danny to hand an usher their tickets. "You okay with this? He was really worried it wasn't the right thing after…you know," she finished with a bob of her head.

Steve nodded. "Yeah, I'm okay with this," he replied.

The usher gestured for them to follow and led them to their seats: second row back from the stage, front and center.

Seated next to each other, Grace and Mary excitedly perused the programs they'd been handed, oohing and aahing over some of the ads and photos of the cast members they found.

Seated beside his daughter, Danny watched like a hawk as Steve gingerly lowered himself into the seat next to him. His right hand was gripping the armrest between them far too hard for Danny's liking. "Maybe it's too soon," Danny leaned over and whispered into Steve's ear.

Steve shook his head no.

"This is the last night of the Hawaii run, I was afraid we'd miss it," Danny continued.

"S'okay, Danny, s'all good," Steve said, taking a slow and deep breath, and then exhaling just as slowly. "I'm good."

They sat in silence until the theatre lights dimmed once…twice. Grace and Mary whispered excitedly, with Mary telling Grace she could hardly remember anything from the last time she'd seen this as a kid, and Grace saying she hoped the Phantom met the same fate in the end as Uncle Steve's had. Well, as far as Grace knew the bad guy was in jail. Danny saw no need to tell her he'd been shipped off to the clinically criminally insane ward of a mainland hospital.

Steve heard Grace's remark and smiled across his partner at the little girl just as the lights went off completely. Then he heard a loud sniff coming from right next to him. "What's the matter with you?" he asked Danny.

"You smell," Danny whispered.

Steve turned and looked at him in the darkness just as the orchestra began to play. "Yeah, like aftershave," he replied, smoothing one hand down the cheek nearest Danny. "Smooth as a baby's—"

Danny's hand clamped tightly over his partner's mouth. "Not in front of my _daughter_," he hissed, music swelling in the pit two rows behind them. "Okay?"

Steve nodded yes, so Danny removed his hand. "Anyway," Danny said, straightening his jacket and leaning closer so Steve could hear him above the music, "that's not the smell I meant."

Giving him a look that said he knew he was going to regret this, Steve finally leaned over, put his mouth to Danny's ear and said, "Okay, I'll bite. What do I smell like this time?"

Danny flashed him a huge, shit-eating grin at the same time as he shrugged. "An overripe pineapple."

"Danny!" Steve whispered fiercely. And just as the music cut off, continued, "I am _not_ a fruit!"

Every head in the theatre turned their way. Mary started laughing hysterically. Grace facepalmed and sank down as far into her chair as she could.

And for the rest of their days as the infamously famous Five-0 partners (who may or may not have been fruit (ripe or otherwise) and may or may not, according to whichever gossip site you read, have been living together - quite possibly even married, so sayeth _The National Enquirer_) Danny Williams and Steve McGarrett never did quite live down the incident which came to be known, both on the editorial page of the _Honolulu Star-Advertiser_ and in Five-0 Lore, as:

**THE 5-0 PINEAPPLE PAIR AND OTHER NATIVE HAWAIIAN FRUITS**

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note: Thank you everyone for sticking with me through this! I have no clue where these weird ideas come from, I'm just glad the Five-0 team (and Grace, and Mary) are willing to play along for the sake of my (in)sanity.<em>

_Shameless Self-Promotion: I always have to do it at the end, so just skip this part if you already know I have an original novel published, too...so if you like my writing, check it out! It's only $2.99 (US) on both Amazon DOT com and Smashwords DOT com. Just search for Takers Chris Davis and you'll find it. You can download it in many formats, including ones you can read right here from your computer screen like you do my fanfic! Thanks a bunch, and thank you everyone for your continued support!_


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